id Software bringing external development back in-house

When Raven Software's long-in-development Wolfenstein (remember when it was an Xbox 360 timed exclusive back in 2005?) finally hits store shelves this August, it'll mark the end of an era ...

... oh no! Not of Wolfenstein games – there are plenty more of those coming – but of outside developers working on id Software's hallowed franchises. John Carmack told Joystiq today that bringing external development back in-house at id is "exactly what's going to be happening." Carmack says that while id's had some hits (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory springs to mind) and some misses (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars springs to mind) the externally developed titles haven't "had the same record that our internally developed titles have." We'd have to agree with him there.

With the lead team cranking on Rage for EA Partners, they created a second development team to work on Doom 4, with a still-formative third team currently toiling away on Quake Live. "We'll have three teams," Carmack told us. "We'll have Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and Rage and one of them will be taking a vacation each cycle and that will depend on what we want to be doing each time." So don't worry, you'll have plenty of all of the above to go around.